"....everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." 1 John 5:3-5

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Over the past three hundred years the Western Judeo-Christian tradition grounded in the Revelation of God has been incrementally eclipsed by an ancient way of viewing spirituality that has been artfully revamped and revised for modern Western consumption.

In "The Making of the New Spirituality," James Herrick masterfully demonstrates how each major tenet of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, which he calls the Revealed Word, has been radically reinvented and disseminated by apostate theologians, new religious cults, through books, speeches, magazines, popular TV programs, plays, radio interviews, music, and websites.

With regard to the Revealed Word, Herrick lists seven major tenets:

1. The supernatural authority of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures: Beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, the Bible is taken to be divinely delivered, thus uniquely authoritative as a source of ultimate truth.

2. A personal, creating and wholly other God: God is all-knowing, all-powerful, present everywhere and possesses traits of personality---thoughts, motives, and the capacity to form relationships. He created the physical and spiritual worlds ex nihilo, or out of nothing. Moreover He is neither contained in nor equivalent with the created order, meaning that man does not have a share of God's substance.

3. God's creation of the human race: The Revealed Word teaches that the human race is a special creation of God, the only part of the creation to bear His spiritual image (mind/spirit). Man then is not a product of strictly natural processes.

4. An intervening God: The Revealed Word affirms that God's activity includes involvement in the lives of individual human beings. On occasion God's personal involvement is in the form of communication and at other times He miraculously alters the ordinary course of cause and effect. Though He invites address and petition through prayer He is not at the command of human beings.

5. Humankind's Fall: The human race fell into sin at the beginning of its existence as a consequence of their refusal to accept divinely mandated limitations on their activities. The Fall carried with it various catastrophic consequences including spiritual confusion, a state of spiritual separation from God and the inevitability of death.

6. Jesus Christ is God Incarnate: Jesus Christ uniquely manifested God in human form. Jesus is a revelation of God's nature in person and the only human being to ever fully express the divine nature. His death and resurrection are uniquely redemptive of fallen humanity. These events are the sole provision by the living God for the salvation of the human race. There is no other way but His offer of salvation.

7. Human destiny and divine judgment: The Revealed Word insists that the eternal destiny of the human race is to be determined only by God. Neither the present earth nor the human race exists indefinitely. Human beings live but one life. They do not spiritually evolve or reincarnate. A final judgment of the human race will occur, and each individual human being will be held accountable for the life lived.

Herrick calls the new spirituality "the New Religious Synthesis" and lists seven of its major components:

1. History is not important: As evolution is a primary doctrine of the new spirituality, and evolution implies continuous change, then history as a record of events in space and time is as useless and absurd as are unchanging higher truths and moral absolutes.

2. The dominance of reason: Reason---also mind, consciousness, intellect, awareness, divine spark, pattern, or imagination---is the divine essence in humans. It is virtually unlimited in its potential development through scientific study, evolution, and mystical experiences. The divine essence is the gateway to human apprehension of spiritual insights such as 'oneness' and 'interconnectedness' coming to those with the most highly evolved consciousness:

"Perhaps the most vital function of psychedelic drugs and plants is their ability to reliably produce spiritual or mystical experiences. These transpersonal experiences of “oneness,” or inseparability, often result in an increased sense of ecological awareness, a greater sense of interconnection, a transcendence of the fear of death, a sense of the sacred or divine, a desire to help humanity, and an identification with something much larger than one’s body or personal life." (Psychedelic Drug Research Heralds the Future Science of Divinity, David Jay Brown, Santa Cruz Patch, June 2012)

3. The spiritualization of science: The tool employed by divine reason to acquire new spiritual truths

4. The animation of nature: Nature (matter) is infused with and animated by divine spirit, the Force, Zoe, consciousness or life force

5. Hidden knowledge (gnosis) and spiritual progress: Gnosis is the key to spiritual insight and human progress and is the preserve of some scientists, mediums and a new class of Western shamans. Such knowledge comes by means of science and spiritual technologies that lead to direct communication with the Ultimate Source (nonliving monistic One Substance, Chaos, Divine Abyss, Primordial Matter). Emptying the mind and disconnecting from reality are the goals of spiritual technologies:

".....spiritual power and a vibrant connection with the universe (is attained by) emptying the mind, leaving reality and getting “high” within. Meditation (sometimes facilitated by, in a Woodstock way, listening to rock music, experimenting with sex, and smoking pot or popping hallucinatory drugs—you know, a little help from “my friends”) often induced what can be called “altered state[s] of consciousness...." "Ecstasy can be deliberately induced using religious or creative activities, meditation, music, dancing, breathing exercises, physical exercise, sex or consumption of psychotropic drugs.” (Altered States: A Different Gate, Sarah Leslie and Pastor Larry DeBruyn, Herescope, April 2011)

Former guru Rabindranath R. Maharaj, now a committed follower of Jesus Christ, describes his former transcendental meditation ritual and its' terrifying consequences:

"Nothing was more important than our daily transcendental meditation, the heart of Yoga, which Krishna advocated as the surest way to eternal Bliss. But it could also be dangerous. Frightening psychic experiences awaited the...meditator, similar to a bad trip on drugs. Demons described in the Vedas had been known to take possession of some Yogis. Kundalini power, said to be coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine, could produce ecstatic experiences when released in deep meditation — or...it could do great mental and bodily harm. The line between ecstasy and horror was very fine...During daily meditation I began to have visions of psychedelic colors, to hear unearthly music, and to visit exotic planets where the gods conversed with me, encouraging me to attain even higher states of consciousness. Sometimes in my trance I encountered the same horrible demonic creatures...depicted by the images in Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and other religious temples. It was a frightful experience, but the Brahmacharya explained that it was normal and urged me to pursue the quest for Self Realization. At times I experienced a sense of mystical unity with the universe. I was the universe, Lord of all, omnipotent, omnipresent. My instructors were excited at this. I was obviously a chosen vessel, destined for early success in the search for union with Brahman. The Forces that had guided my father were now guiding me." (Death of a Guru, Rabindranath R. Maharaj, pp. 56-57)

6. Spiritual evolution: Spiritual evolution is not simply change but advancement that occurs incrementally over time as the initiate achieves greater and greater interconnectedness with the Ultimate Source. The eventual result of this process will supposedly be human divinity.

7. Religious pluralism as rooted in mystical experiences of the Ultimate Source: Experiences of interconnectedness or oneness provide a basis for religious pluralism:

"Bishop William Swing, of the Episcopal Church's Diocese of California, thinks he is building a religious bridge to the new millennium, and he wants everybody on Earth to cross it with him. His United Religions Initiative (URI) is trying to create a United Religions, a world parliament of religions, "a permanent assembly, with the stature and visibility of the United Nations, where the world's religions and spiritual communities will gather on a daily basis, in prayerful dialogue and cooperative action, to make peace among religions and to be a force for peace among nations, to address urgent human need and to heal the earth." (The United Religions Initiative---Foundation for a World Religion, Lee Penn)

According to Swing's experience of oneness:

"Religion is concerned with the relationship of human beings with their spiritual Origin. We believe in the universality and eternity of the Spirit. We believe that all religions derive their wisdom from that ultimate Source. Therefore, the world's faith traditions share in common wisdom, which can be obscured by differences in religious concepts and practices. ... The United Religions promotes dialogue. A theology of acceptance will help the world's people explore common ground. Our awareness of unity within religious diversity promotes ever-increasing kinship." (ibid)

So stunning has been the transformation of Western consciousness under the shaping influence of the New Religious Synthesis that it has now supplanted the Revealed Word as the religious foundation of a large and growing number of Westerners and Americans. James Herrick comments:

"For many Westerners, the long-prophesied new spiritual age certainly has arrived. The Revealed Word and its busy, personal God have faded into our collective spiritual memory, and bright new spiritual commitments encourage fresh religious thought." (Herrick, p. 16)

The Big Lie

The devil's powerfully seductive Big Lie underlies the New Religious Synthesis. This thought is expressed openly in the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Beverly Galyean, leading exponent of occult spiritual New Age confluent education:

"The Buddhists and the Jains do not depend on God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion: to evolve a God out of man." (Inspired Talks, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center, 1958, p. 218)

"Once we begin to see that we are all God, that we have the attributes of God, then, I think the whole purpose of human life is to reown the Godlikeness within us...So my whole view is very much based on that idea." (Galyean quoted by Francis Adeney, Educators Look East, Radix 12, No. 3, Nov-Dec. 1980, p. 21)

Unmasked, the New Religious Synthesis reveals itself as mystical pantheism, or devilish occult spirituality, which always surfaces at the end of a civilization. It heralded the end of Babylon, Rome and the Aztec civilization. It came at the end of the medieval world and now it has come at the end of the post-Christian West, a social order that is turning its back on the living God of Revelation in preference to the lies of the devil and his minions.

Dr. Carl Raschke, author of "Painted Black," notes with alarm America's downward spiral into the madness of occult spirituality. He points out that the decadence, moral relativism, drugs, obsession with death, pornography, mass murders, criminality, the 'new religions,' and Satanism in American culture have certain social and spiritual ties that bind them together, revealing that they are part of a similar spiritual genus. The upsurge of Satanist practices, said Raschke,

"....must be interpreted not as some kind of odd wrinkle...but as a culminating phase of the "New Age" movement...The Satanist mindset is not "religion" in the regular sense of the word, but a mystification of the most corrupt secular passions and values...Satanism is but the spiritual Frankenstein created by a social order that has attempted to sustain itself without God." (Satanism and Witchcraft: The Occult and the West — Part 6, Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon)